


Alternate Ending

by S_IRIS



Series: Afghanistan Or Iraq? [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Childhood Memories, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Femlock, John Loves Sherlock, Mind Palace, POV John Watson, Reunions, Sherlock Loves John, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-15
Updated: 2014-06-15
Packaged: 2018-02-04 18:32:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1788991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/S_IRIS/pseuds/S_IRIS
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alternate Ending to 'One Last Time'. Continued from when Sherlock leaves the Party.</p><p>
  <strong>Advice/Warning to all: Read it only if you've read the first part to the series, otherwise this is not gonna make any sense.</strong>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alternate Ending

**Author's Note:**

> I was dissatisfied by the way I ended the first part, so this is the other ending, because the first one was too cliché. And this one is more canon.
> 
> But don't worry, it's still a happy ending! :)

_A Bit Not Good, Yeah._

Sherlock searched desperately for Molly with her eyes, or Greg, because that's who she would be with. And away from Jim, of course, he being her ex. And suddenly, she began wondering why Molly had wanted to come to her ex's party, and also bring Sherlock along.

Her mind wanted to believe that she was the part of an elaborate scheme hatched by John to bring Sherlock into the party, so that.... she did not dare to think beyond that. She did not dare to think that John had something for her, after learning the lesson of a lifetime. When she had come to the party, she had vowed to herself that she would look at John not more than ten times. And here, she had obviously exceeded it, and also had lost count of it.

This wasn't a party for her. It was like a dungeon, or more appropriately, an Iron Maiden.

She needed to leave before they could ask her any more questions relating to John. She needed to go. She checked the time. It was almost eleven. It would take her another half-an-hour to reach her house, so it was okay.

Last time, she told herself, and turned to look into John's eyes. Watching him. Re-recording every last minute detail of him. And then, somehow, John turned too, and this time, he didn't look away. He held her gaze, and she held his. Disappointment flooded through her. Time didn't slow down. Wind did not stop. Silence wasn't cast all over the room. No breath caught in her throat. No serotonin, no hormones. Still nothing. Still numb. Still no heartbreak, still no giddiness.

Movies lie, books lie. All conspired to push people into the all-consuming pit of love.

In her Palace, she stood watching, as doors closed one by one, like a scene filmed a million times. The Blind man came and kidnapped John, took him away while Sherlock watched, still not able to react, still paralysed.

Calm, peaceful, hateful.

As John reached out for her hand, to measure their palms, he felt himself burning, but he still didn't pull away. He remained valiant, and brave as always, the little boy, not the serious, focused teenager.

In the church, as she played the memory for the umpteenth time, this time she saw John's fingers approach hers, and then drift away, as John fell from his chair, into a burning mass down below them. Sherlock watched, still not able to do anything.

In the grounds, she heard John say 'no' to her. Because she had waited, although not willingly. Her legs had frozen. Of course, she told herself. He was always going to say no.

_No. NO._

_I do not love you._

_I'm sorry for that._

_I have soccer practice now, and all the boys will be coming so I gotta go. Bye._

She turned around, and she left Jim's house, leaving John to stare after her. The only one to see her leave.

_Goodbye John._

The little John pleaded to be rescued, but she just watched, beyond everything. She would've traded her Palace to feel anything, even pain. To hear her heart snap into two. But it was already broken. How could it break again?

_Wait, tell me how you knew that I was from Afghanistan?_

The hurricane stopped, but the storm didn't.

She knew that she had promised to herself that she wouldn't bring the cigarette to her lips that evening. But it was a small thing compared to the rebelliousness she felt when she smoked in a place she wasn't supposed to. Rebelliousness as opposed to the artificial peace she felt.

_Work it out, John. You know my methods._

* * *

 Seven years later...

Sometimes, when all was quiet, John could still hear it, in his ears, like a record playing over and over again, set to on whenever screaming would reach his ears. The reverberating, lucid memories were nearly enough to drive a man insane, and surely enough to drive a man from his own, although temporary, home. The silent, hateful glares in his direction whenever he would not come home at a reasonable hour. He had no idea who had sown those ideas in Mary's mind, and he didn't want to know. Unimportant. Unnecessary.

John could still hear the incredulous laugh of a Girl in Year 10, dark curly hair, ivory skin, a skin he always wanted to kiss beneath him, a Girl he wanted to laugh with for the rest of his life, a Girl he wanted to solve crimes with the rest of his life, just like She used to say. He could still hear Her arrogant, imperious voice, he could still feel Her fingers under his, just that one time, at Christmas, he could still feel Her eyes on him. He could still remember the dismay he felt whenever She ran away from him, as if She were afraid of trusting him with Herself, and John always wondered what he was doing wrong, why She didn't like him back.

_You are a girl, and you still have bigger palms than I do._

She had changed. She was no longer the girl he had fallen in love with. She no longer talked about the criminal cases. She no longer talked about Her weird experiments that he thought weren't possible, but they worked like a charm every time, leaving him utterly bamboozled. And amazed.

She became... a girl John would never have fallen for, but he had loved Her nonetheless, because She still looked like the Girl he had fallen for, and he knew that She was there, deep inside, but he wasn't sure if he wanted to be with this warped version of Her anymore.

John remembered Her long pale throat, and the cigarette smoke that She sucked from them and out of Her full lips, a fallen angel in disguise and a demon in human form, Her fingers wrapping themselves around the little white smoke machine as She drank from it. He watched Her only from a distance, when he was sure that She couldn't see him because She would be looking away, or wandering in Her 'Mind Palace'. His friends would keep on talking, and he would keep nodding, not really caring what they said, because all they could talk about was Mary Morstan or Sarah Sawyer, and how good their bodies were, or how nice they looked when they walked.

John still remembered how Her voice had almost trembled at the last word before She ran away, after his heart soared, and before it dipped down to a trough of a wave.

He remembered how She once told him that She could get lost in Her own Palace, when She would go down a certain circular maze with only one correct route and 243 wrong ones. She could stay in there for hours, many-a-times, She could go into a coma, where Her mind would be searching for an exit for hours.

He had once asked Her what lay in the centre of it, since it was a circular maze it had to have a centre. She always changed the topic, and he never took anything approaching to a liberty with Her, so much did he always respect Her.

He had never expected Her, of all people in the world, to play such a cruel joke on him. She joked all the time, mostly practical and very untimely ones, and She even experimented on him, and he let Her. But this was his heart. She had crossed the line this time.

But John had still loved Her. And he wasn't sure what it was now.

* * *

_John wanted to run towards Her figure sprinting away at top speed, to stop Her, to tell Her that he loved Her too, that he wanted to hold Her, and laugh away with Her at Her stupidity when it came to relationships._

_She had changed, but now it didn't matter. All that mattered now were the laughs, the jokes, the feeling of being together with Her and the ridiculous cases She told him about._

_But She was running away. He shouted after Her, but he suspected that She didn't hear. That was okay, he would tell Her everything he felt on Monday. John tried his best to not think about why She had run away, and instead focussed on the practice. Every free kick he made that day went outside the ground. Despite the fact that he got kicked once or twice during the practice (or so many times that he lost count), he still didn't shout at them angrily. He took it all happily._

_-_

_-_

_"What?!" Mary's voice rang out, as clear and as sharp as a whip. John flinched at the suddenness of it, "You like Sherlock Holmes?!"_

_John smiled goofily, not able to stop himself as he told her that that day about the fact that Sherlock had confessed. He loved Her, so much. But Mary didn't seem pleased even in the slightest._

_"Yeah I guess, I mean, of course I -!"_

_"John, God, she's messing with you!"_

_He turned around at her, looking at her with incredulity, trying not to believe her. Sherlock wouldn't do that, would She?_

_"What?"_

_She looked pained, "I'm sorry, I didn't think you liked her back, I didn't-"_

_"What?!" He demanded, his voice angry, steady, hard, furious._

_"I'm... just, Janine and I were playing this truth-and-dare game..."_

_John felt his universe sinking into him, collapsing into itself, matter sucked into itself, self-destructing, matter and antimatter sucked into a black hole, at the centre of the universe, exceeding critical mass, 1.5 solar masses, 2, 3, 4, 10, 100..._

It's primary school stuff, how can you not know it?...

If I've ever known, I've deleted it.

_Ripping him away, into pieces..._

_"...and she invited Sherlock along. Of course, she didn't want to come, you know how she is, but then I dared her that she didn't have the guts to ask out any guy that I pointed to..."_

_A joke, that was what it was to Her. A silly little joke. About guts. Why him?_

Why me? _He wanted to croak out._

_He wished he could create a Mind Palace of his own and succumb to it, like She did. Go into coma perhaps._

_"... And then she just said that she could do anything, perhaps even try this one as an experiment, and then I dared her to ask you out.... John, you okay?"_

_A brush of fingers against his. But this time, it wasn't Her long, oddly elegant ones, this time it was shorter, with long fingernails with blue paint on them, soft hands, not Her blistered ones which mostly had sticking plasters on them, and those which had chemical stains all over them, which had blunt and naturally pink fingernails, nervous, agile, quivering like the antennae of an insect._

_"Yeah," he barked out a brittle laugh, removing his fingers at once, not letting the touch of Her be overridden by someone else, "no I mean, yeah. That's what She does, doesn't She? I used to be Her friend, so it was perfectly logical that She was gonna experiment on me."_

_It never occurred to him that Mary might be making it up as she leaned against him, giving every indication that she was as... whatever-he-had-been-feeling-then as he was. He felt her hands creeping and then encompass his waist, while she rested her chin against him as he sat there, in the same bench in the same park where he had had ice-cream with Sherlock a lifetime ago. He had been bleeding then, and he was bleeding now, and both the times the reason had been Her. The difference was only that this time, it was his heart, and a million times painful and numbing._

_He stood up suddenly, causing Mary to back away, "John?!"_

_He straightened up, and walked away, towards nowhere, perhaps his home. He turned around an alley, and pressed his fingers to his eyes and stayed quiet a long time. And if a tear escaped them, well, no one would ever be the wiser._

* * *

John thought of Sherlock, but it still couldn't block out the reality.

He wondered how he had ended up with Mary after all. It had been something after that party. He remembered looking into Sherlock's eyes just before She had left. Her eyes betrayed no emotion, and John had, like he always did, wondered why She would do that to him, if only for an experiment.

But something about Her eyes made John want to seek Her out. They weren't piercing as always, they were vacant, just the way he had been feeling. He watched Her leave Jim's house, head bowed, earphones in Her ears, and suddenly he wanted to confront Her. But She was gone, just as suddenly She had come into her life, just as dramatic.

_Afghanistan or Iraq?_

_Do you know me?_

_I wouldn't bother to._

He went back to Jim's house, and suddenly, he found himself in Mary's arms, with Sarah glaring daggers at her, and seven years passed. He became a doctor, he still went out with Mary, he still led the dull existence except for the moments when he had the scalpel in his hands, and he remembered Her haughty and razor sharp cheekbones, just as sharp.

_You're an idiot, John!_

So, when Mary screamed at him for the millionth time, for sleeping with someone John had never even heard of, he stood up, and left. She screamed behind him, and he closed the door behind him.

A doctor with a limp, that's how he was known in his hospital. It reminded him of Greg House. He couldn't feel anything anymore. It all had been exhausted, back when She had walked out of his life, and now he was walking out of Mary's. They were done, not that they had ever been something, not to him at least as he reflected back upon his so-called relationship with her, but he was D-O-N-E.

He had no contact with Sherlock, not even a single glance of Hers during all the years, not since ten years ago, when She had told him that She loved him. He now knew that She did, in fact, and Mary had lied to him but it had been too late. He had come to know about it only when he had gone and asked for Sherlock at Her house, to her Mummy, but she was already gone. She had left for America after that, after an offer letter from Stanford. He had pleaded with Mycroft, who only said that he couldn't do anything, because this was Her decision. Annoying git, he always interfered except for the time when it mattered.

 _Tell Her I'm sorry_ , he had said to Mycroft. But he had simply shaken his head and walked away.

Leaning on the walking stick, he walked and walked, away from there, just away, with no particular destination in his mind, to be as far from wherever he was at the present time. And there, right in the middle of London, in Regent's Park, he heard it.

"John? John Watson?!"

He turned around, at the man, bespectacled, plump and red, with a takeout cup in his hand, the very image of a happily married man, the very image of domestic bliss, "John Watson! Stamford, Mike Stamford! We were at school together-"

John grimaced guiltily. Mike used to be his best friend in middle school, after Sherlock. He extended a hand in response to the pudgy hand that he outstretched excitedly in his direction, "Yes, of course, sorry Mike, hello!"

Mike gave him a smile, happy and comfortingly genuine, "Yeah, I know, I got fat."

John smiled back, a little softened by the first real smile he had seen in a long time. Mike had always been plump, "No, I mean, yeah, but-"

"How are you, mate? Haven't seen you in, like, years," he spoke cheerfully, "Fancy a coffee?"

"Yeah, sure."

* * *

After an hour, John and Mike were walking towards the St. Bart's hospital. John wanted to get away, and he wanted a new job. He didn't fancy seeing Mary in the hospital all the time, having broken up with her when she would still be a nurse in there.

Mike had asked him about how his life was, about how Harry was, and in turn, he had poured in about how happy he was with his wife and his two kids, and how irritated he was with his students, and everything.

"It's your lucky day, John!" he patted him on the shoulder, "we're short on staff… Last one went off on maternity leave, and we really need an A&E doctor, if that's okay-"

"Yeah," he said at once, anything to get away from Mary and her manipulative reach, "A&E sounds great."

"Awesome, so I'll just grab my coat from the lab and we'll go to the Chief of Staff."

"Sure," said he, forcing a smile. They pushed through the double doors and the chuckle bubbling up from John’s chest got stuck right in his throat. He stared at the Lady sitting across the room from him, immersed in Her work, doing some chemical analysis with sophisticated apparatus. She seemed taller than the night when She had walked out of that party. She looked much mature and much refined than the Girl in the shirt and the simple woollen cardigan. Her dress might have been different, and She might have been looking posh, but it was Her, there was no mistaking in the single-minded focus that She put in Her work, or the flutter that he felt in himself whenever he saw Her at work, or those cheekbones. Her fingers were no longer acid-stained, and John wondered how She had managed to get rid of them.

It was Sherlock Holmes.

She did a double take at him, and he saw Her stiffen visibly. Their eyes met and Sherlock’s expression betrayed a moment of indefinable emotion before masking itself with indifference. John couldn't quite breathe properly, so he looked down and let Mike speak first.

"Yeah, it's her, if you're wondering. Comes here and-"

"Mike can I borrow your phone?" came Her voice, just as he remembered it, as if John had been transported back in time, back when he was a kid, "There's no signal on mine."

There was an exchange of words, which John could only translate as 'No I haven't'. He simply extended his hand, with his phone, the limp forgotten, the cane forgotten as it fell to the ground with a clatter, and drawing Sherlock's attention to it.

"Here, use mine."

She threw him a hard look and strode out of there.

Mike simply shrugged his shoulders as John looked at him, whether to thank him or not he had no idea, "Yeah, don't let it get to you. She always does that."

* * *

Sherlock had no words how to express the way she had felt when she discovered that John was staring across at her. It was like her Palace had never destroyed the memories of John at all. As if it had deceived her by putting a black fireproof cellophane sheet over them, only to resurface when John came back.

No, she told herself. She was done with goodbyes. No fabricating the new ones.

She had torn down her maze, the circular Maze which sealed off any access to the centre, unauthorised or not, when she found out that it couldn't serve its purpose anymore. Instead, she had hidden it behind layers of haughtiness and condescension, and found out that such a barrier was more effective than the physical ones. But that didn't mean that she hadn't rebuilt it. Making it a spiralling circular Labyrinth made of the toughest material, impenetrable, unsolvable puzzle. A 3-D structure, a spherical maze, instead of the circular 2-D one. She had believed that John had earlier flown over the Labyrinth and got to the centre. Now, that possibility was eliminated. It now had 1812 wrong routes, and only one correct one. She now liked getting lost inside it sometimes, when she had no cases to crack up, it was her best alternative. The Maze was her best distraction.

"Sherlock!"

She closed her eyes, the timbre of his mellow tenor seeping through her, into her Palace, eating away the layers.

"Wait!" John called after her.

And before she could run away like she always did, he was in front of her, "I didn't expect you here, of all people!"

She attempted a half-smile, "Ah... Good to know. Now, if you'll excuse me-"

"Wait!" His eyes flicked over her entire figure, lighting up in unconscious appreciation, his face breaking into a lopsided smile, the sort he gave her whenever he used to tease her when they were kids, "You look..." he gulped before saying further, every syllable earnest, "amazing."

 _You look like a mad scientist,_ said little John, after his mouth had closed, on the day when Sherlock had arrived in the school with all her hair cut off. She jolted back to present.

Sherlock tried to maintain a straight face in the wake of her heart pounding furiously against the icy cage, "Thank you," and then after moments of contemplation, added, "You too."

John blushed, like he used to for no reason at all, and she felt her heart soar for the first time in years. She hadn't seen him blush since the Year 9. She still revelled in the fact that she could still do that. Once upon a time, she used to be the only girl who could've done that. She wasn't sure if that was true anymore.

John looked at her expectantly, and then looked down at his shoes, "I thought you would say something like _could you please teach me how to make such subtle observations_."

She swallowed, heat rising in her cheeks. He remembered her, her words, all these years. He missed her too, "No, because you clearly can't and it'll be a waste of my breath."

He smiled, and then swallowed thickly, as if a dry-pill were stuck in his throat. She watched him, his face, his fingers, wishing her mind could've catalogued the feel of them when she had got the only opportunity. The inexorable draw she felt to him, the man who had once been the centre of her universe, coinciding with the centre of her Maze. He had become much more mature, his jaw had become stronger, the squareness of a determined man. There were large pouches under his eyes, his eyes which weren't the same blue anymore. He hadn't been sleeping properly. The stubble grew wild in his cheeks. A scar adorned the side of his face, almost invisible to anyone who did not care to look for it long enough. He turned a little, and it disappeared.

_Optical illusion. The finest example of one._

Things always escaped when she had just gotten hold of it. It always did. Just like the little scar.

She hardened her heart and proceeded to burn whatever there was left of him in her Palace, even after ten years, she was amazed by how strong his hold was still there on her. She could not see every wrinkle on his forehead, but some of the major ones she did. Little John pulled himself out of the fire and came up to her.

_Good. You didn't eat my ice-cream._

John gave a laugh, the sort she thought she would never hear again, "True."

They both looked away, indefinable silence hanging over them. Not awkward, not companionable. Just silence, long and tentative. Finally John gave in, approaching her as cautiously as if she were a bomb, "Listen, erm... I wanted to ask you something."

Her Palace stopped the self-destruct sequence in the places where John was still there: everywhere, instead busying itself in retrieving whatever data she had deleted. Hope was too strong a word for the situation. "Ask then," she tried to remain stoic, not letting John see that she had already crumbled inwardly. She was done with pretending that John missed her too. He was probably going to ask her-

"Why are you always alone?" said he, his brows knitted slightly. Sherlock wished she had heard wrong. She wished she were dead. Of all people, why did John have to ask her that?

"I mean, I don't want to come across as impertinent, but... why do you want to settle for alone?"

_Because Alone is what I have. Alone will not break my heart, it'll always protect it._

In her Palace, she opened a cabinet. It was in a morgue, the sort of morgue Molly always dreamt of working in, but dreams never are reality. The morgue at the centre of her Palace, at the centre of the spherical Maze, from where escape was impossible for anyone except Sherlock. She reached inside it and took her heart in her palms, too big for her to handle, too frail for her to manage.

She had built the 3-D Maze in such a way that it changed the architecture everytime she faced it. So that even if someone managed to penetrate her consciousness, they would never get to her heart. It would always remain protected. But John had found his way around it, his smiles drilling and melting his way in through the diamond walls of the maze: the hardest substance made of the element with the highest melting point.

 _Diamond. Allotrope of carbon. Carbon. Atomic number 6. Melting point: 3773 Kelvin. Greatest ability for catenation in all of the elements in the periodic table and to form strong, stable covalent bonds due to small size and valency of 4. Eight allotropes of carbon. Most of them black. Black. Darkness. Nothingness. What I don't feel now. What I wish I could feel. What I felt when I left him._ _Felt. Left. Two very different words, consisting of the same letters, a different permutation lending different meanings to them._

"That's what you think?" she croaked.

John watched his shoes intensely, and then looked up at her, still at a distance, "No. I want to change that."

She came across a different room. She rushed inside and pulled it open.

 _There are no arch-enemies in real life_ , little John said, when she had told him that Mycroft was her arch-enemy. John had scoffed at that. They were still friends, still a stranger to the concept of romance. At least she was. Had he been too?

_Doesn't happen._

At that point, when she was in Year 8, she could've given up anything to disappear to her Palace, where she could create anything, conceive anything. There was a separate room for such conjurations, the sort that John later described as The Room of Entertainment. She had rolled her eyes at that. It was obviously a Harry Potter reference to the Room Of Requirement.

She used to imagine the world wrapping into itself, but the buildings remained rooted to the surface on which they were built, collapsing into one form, and yet unscathed.

_What do real people have, in their... real lives?_

_Friends..._ he eyed her cautiously, expectantly,  _girlfriends, boyfriends..._

 _Pfft!_ She overrode him, _Dull, boring, predictable. Pick what you like._

The John in the football jersey looked down, his lip curling in disappointment as Sherlock looked away towards the blackboard...

 _No,_ she replayed John's words in her mind, _I want to change that._

John wanted her. He was still in her love with her. Moreover, he actually _was_ in love with her.

She closed her eyes for a blink, feeling his words imprinting on her. At that moment, when he confronted her, she did what her heart always screamed to her to do. She let go. She let it melt away. The protective walls.

_Diamond changes to carbon dioxide upon burning. Solid to gas. Entropy of the system increases, change in entropy becomes positive, reflecting a change in randomness. Randomness of mind, of thoughts juxtaposed upon one another. Randomness invites chaos. Chaos to order... or just coincidence?_

_The universe is rarely so lazy for a mere coincidence. This was meant to be. The only possible solution._

Precisely the reason why she couldn't run away from him. He was omnipresent in her Palace. There was no reason he wouldn't be such even in her real world.

"I love you," she whispered to the dark, for what seemed like the millionth time. Bland words, with a sea of opportunities in them. Except this time, John was there with her, in the dark alleyway behind St. Bart's, in the evening. Maybe the first time, it had been the light interfering, blinding the truth...

To her surprise, John crossed the distance between them in a second, and grabbed her wrist, strong but not painful, just like he did in her Palace, in the room that she had forbidden herself to visit, in the room where she always kissed John, but John never kissed her back. In spite of all her wild imagination, she couldn't imagine that. This time, her heart gave out, at his searing touch. This time, instead of him, she felt herself burning, but she kept her arm there resolutely as she felt it going aflame.

"What're you doing?" she managed to breathe out.

 _Give me your hand_ , _he whispered, his voice not yet cracked, no Adam's apple bobbing in his throat._

John simply smiled, "Don't want you running away this time."

And suddenly it dawned on her: what she had done wrong. John wanted her to be herself, had loved the girl she was in Year 9, something she had clearly forsaken over those past three years, in the hope that John would want her only if she became like the rest of the girls. That's why John had never had a girlfriend. The same reason why Sherlock had shaken Victor Trevor off during that evening.

His grip on her slackened, as she looked down, "Ten years, John. You... waited ten years to tell me that?"

His fingers slid down, to her left palm, to thread with her fingers, "I'm stupid I know. I followed you from that party. I went to your house, but you were gone, and Mycroft didn't allow me-"

Sherlock straightened up at that angrily, "What the-?" But John merely stopped her, a palm in front of her, "Please, let me say this."

She closed her mouth. She was going to mend her mistake. She was going to let him talk. She was going to listen to him. He leaned down towards her, "I'm sorry for being so stupid. I should've known better. I should've done better, after everything... That evening I knew, and I don't know if this was supposed to be, maybe that's why... I have no idea," he sucked in a harsh breath, "I love you too."

_No. NO._

_I do not love you._

_I'm sorry for that._

_I have soccer practice now, and all the boys will be coming so I gotta go. Bye._

**DELETE. REPLACING WITH FRESH DATA...**

_Yes. YES._

_I do love you._

_I'm sorry for everything, I should've known better._

_I don't know if this was supposed to be, maybe that's why... I have no idea._

_So, no byes. Because I'm staying with you._

She stopped her thoughts from flowing in and out when she felt John's other palm on her cheek, and she sucked in a breath to ask him something that only John asked her in her Palace, the John in her mind, "Still?"

She felt his chest against hers as he embraced her, kissing her cheek softly as he confirmed her words, "Still... Always... and then you're gonna tell me about the latest crime that you found interesting."

She kissed his cheek back, taking the odour of his lime-cream aftershave in. He remembered. Love promotes extraordinarily retentive memories, she concluded. Must perform an experiment on that.

 _Afghanistan or Iraq?_   she asked John, little John, teen John, John in his football jersey, John during the graduation, the John in her arms.

 _You_ , all of them replied, and she kissed him in the forbidden room of her Mind Palace, finally together as one.

And finally, John kissed her back in there.


End file.
